What can one say about Mid-August Lunch that isn’t covered by its less than arresting title? Well, it’s not quite the directorial debut we were expecting from Gianni Di Gregorio, the acclaimed screenwriter behind neorealist gangster epic Gomorrah. Set in the run up to the August 15 Italian holiday, Di Gregorio, who also stars, plays a cash-strapped middle-aged man who inadvertently winds up babysitting four difficult elderly ladies, including his own mother.
What follows is a comedy of manners, a slight if perfectly pitched chamber piece. It’s unlikely to scare the horses, but then, it is called Mid-August Lunch and not Gargantuan Car Crash.